106 



THE AMERICAN APIGULTURIST. 



Upper Lusatia, to whom we owe 

 much new and important knowl- 

 edge concerning the policy of bees, 

 has shed much light on this point. 

 lie has proved by many experi- 

 ments, that a queen may be procre- 

 ated out of every common worker 

 larva if the latter be not over three 

 daj^s old. He cut out a comb with 

 brood containing eggs, larvse and 

 closed-up nymphse, and placed it 

 in an empty hive with a sufficient 

 number of common workers, and 

 every time these bees brought out 

 a queen for themselves. They built 

 a royal cell around a three or four 

 days' old pupa, provided it with 

 better royal jelly (as they always do 

 with queens), and thus raised it. 

 Mr. Schirach at first supposed, and 

 others were of the same opinion, 

 that, by a favorable chance, he had 

 hit every time some cells with one 

 or more queen eggs, i. e., such eggs 

 wherein the germ of a royal pupa 

 was deposited, which the bees might 

 discover by their natural instinct ; 

 and some do even assert that such 

 supernumerary queen eggs were in 

 store at different times, in order to 

 supply the loss of the mother bee, 

 if necessary. Therefore he had 

 twelve small wooden boxes made, 

 and placed in every one a brood 

 frame of only four inches out of 

 one hive and at the same time, with 

 eggs and pupae, and added a few 

 workers ; and he found in all the 

 twelve boxes, after three or four 

 days, royal cells with larvae, and in 

 seventeen days lie had fifteen live 

 and fine queens. He repeated this 

 experiment every month through 



the whole year, and obtained queens 

 every time ; indeed, he obtained a 

 queen out of a single live worm, 

 which lay in a common cell. 



These experiments make it highly 

 probable, that a queen may be 

 raised out of every common bee 

 larva, and I am confirmed in this 

 opinion by my experience with 

 most of my artificial swarms, which 

 I reared after the method prevail- 

 ing in Franconia. Whoever tries 

 it, will agree with me. Just take 

 out of any hive a frame of four to 

 five inches square, filled with brood ; * 

 haug it in another empty hive and 

 place the latter in the place of the 

 other hive ; you will soon become 

 aware that the bees, which had 

 flown out of the latter hive in order 

 to gather honey, will enter this 

 new hive, build there some royal 

 cells and procure queens for them- 

 selves in the above mentioned man- 

 ner. 



But if a queen may issue out of 

 every common bee larva, it fol- 

 lows : 1. That the external circum- 

 stances, for instance, the better 

 food, and the larger cell in which 

 the sexual organs of the bee have 

 greater liberty to develop are the 

 cause, that a queen issues out of a 

 pupa which was to become a 

 worker. 2. That all common bees 

 originally belong to the female sex ; 

 that they are incomplete females, 

 but that they need only one grade 

 more to become queens and mothers 

 of many swarms. ^ 



1 Mr. Riem in the Palatinate, goes still 

 furtlier and claims against Mr. Bonnet in his 

 EssMys of the year 1770, that his workers had 

 repeatedly laid several liundred ejjgs in a lit- 

 tle hive, in which he had placed empty rose- 



